At CFO (Boardroom Media) we track over 1,000,000 startups and over 5,000,000 people who hold key positions in these companies. We use this directory of startups to highlight top employees, founders and board members we think deserve more appreciation than they are currently getting.
This list showcases the top San Francisco based CFO’ operating in the Automotive space. If you think a CFO’ is missing from this list, feel free to contact our editor on [email protected]
The individuals on this list have been included because of exceptional performance in one of the following categories:
- Innovation – Operating as a key part in an extremely innovative business or startup.
- Growth – Operating as a key figure in the growth and upscale of a market leading business or startup.
- Management – Showing exceptional management skills.
- Societal impact – Putting their business on the map for their positive societal or environmental impact.
Our Data – We source our data from OSINT (open source intelligence) and public directories such as Crunchbase, SemRush and many more. The data from these sources should be treated with a degree of caution and verified yourself.
Helen Riley
Chief Financial Officer of X, the moonshot factory
As Chief Financial Officer at X, Helen leads the teams that smooth the way for moonshot technologies to become successful businesses. Helen joined X from Google where she led global finance and analytics for Google’s marketing teams, focused on products such as YouTube, Search and Android. Before joining Google, Helen was a strategy consultant at The Boston Consulting Group in San Francisco and an investment banker at Morgan Stanley in London. Helen holds a B.A. & M.A. in Philosophy, Politics and Economics from Oxford University and an M.B.A from Harvard Business School. Originally from London, UK, Helen now lives with her husband and two children in California.
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About X, the moonshot factory: X, the moonshot factory invents and launches breakthrough technologies and radical solutions.
Debra A. Crow
CFO of Volta Charging
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About Volta Charging: Volta Charging designs, installs, and maintains a network of electric vehicle charging stations.
Tom Barone
CFO of Light
Tom is Chief Financial Officer of Light. In his role as CFO, Tom is responsible for Light’s finance, accounting and administrative operations, legal, human resources and investor relations. He brings to the company over thirty years of extensive financial and operations experience from various high technology software and services companies.
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About Light: Light enables machines to see like humans using a camera-based perception platform that revolutionizes perception for ADAS/AV.
Guru Sankararaman
Co-founder, CFO and VP of Ops of Tekion
Guru is an accomplished engineer & technology executive with 25 years of progressive experience and has a proven track record of successfully building, and managing Business and Technology Operations. He is a co-founder of Tekion Corp, which is building world’s best business applications on the cloud starting with the automotive retail industry by using cutting-edge technologies like big data, machine learning/AI, and human computer interaction. At Tekion, Guru oversees Finance, Operations, and Cloud Infrastructure. Prior to this, he was the VP of Information Technology at Tesla for over 4 years and was responsible for Tesla’s Global IT Infrastructure and Operations. Guru built a high performance global team and also led the team to build Tesla’s entire global IT Infrastructure & Private cloud supporting ERP / E-commerce Applications, Retail IT, Engineering, Vehicle Connectivity, and Factory systems. In prior roles, Guru has designed and implemented large global datacenter infrastructure and managed them. He has also championed the architecture and implementation of large private and public clouds across the globe. Guru is technically very savvy with modern cloud platforms, highly available & scalable application and collaboration platforms, information security, end-user computing and virtualization. He is a high energy, driven and results oriented leader and a recipient of many organizational awards in his successful career for leading, architecting and delivering on transformational initiatives. His vast knowledge and experience in infrastructure & business application use models across different industry verticals is a core strength of him.
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About Tekion: Tekion is a cloud-built platform with advanced machine learning and AI capabilities for a personalized and seamless consumer experience.
Kelly Kay
EVP & CFO of Toyota Research Institute
Kelly Kay is the Executive Vice President of the Toyota Research Institute (TRI) & Chief Financial Officer at TRI responsible for Finance, Human Resources, IT, Legal/Compliance, Facilities and all operations. Kelly joined TRI in February 2017 and formerly served as the Chief Operating Officer. Prior to TRI, Kelly served as the Vice President of Business Operations at Lyft, Inc., where she built and led the teams responsible for Regulatory Compliance, Audit & Reporting, Payments & Fraud, and Airport Operations. She also served as the Chief Operating Officer and President of YapStone, Inc., a leading electronic payments company in the real property space. Prior to serving as an operational leader, Kelly was an attorney for more than 19 years and held roles as a General Counsel, Associate General Counsel & Head of Compliance, as well as a leader in public policy and government relations at companies such as MasterCard, eBay, PayPal and J.P. Morgan (previously Banc One). Kelly has spent her career designing solutions to bring traditional, highly regulated products and services into the digital age in a compliant and operationally friendly manner. Her key areas of focus include ride-sharing, autonomous technologies regulation, online payments, online financial services, privacy, anti-money laundering, and online auctions. Kelly attended The Ohio State University and Capital University Law School where she graduated Summa Cum Laude.
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About Toyota Research Institute: Toyota Research Institute is an R&D enterprise with an initial focus on artificial intelligence and robotics.

Dianne Dubois
Chief Financial Officer of MOTA
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About MOTA: MOTA designs, manufactures, and markets innovative and stylish wearable and mobile consumer electronics.

Jacob Burwell
CFO of Actify
Jacob Burwell is CFO at Actify.
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About Actify: Actify is the leading provider of visualization and program management solutions for the automotive supply chain